


pour my heart a new foundation

by wastrelwoods



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Trans Male Character, canon-typical daddy issues, every o'shaugnessey is trans. i believe that, runs from pre-canon to just post sophomore year, seafood parties, that is my agenda i speak it into existence, trans riz gukgak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: The second thing Riz does after figuring out he’s trans is to call his mom.
Relationships: The Bad Kids & Riz Gukgak
Comments: 26
Kudos: 107





	pour my heart a new foundation

**Author's Note:**

> merida voice if you had the chance to question your gender...would ye...
> 
> cw: canon-typical underage drinking, references to transphobia and misgendering offscreen, a trans man unexpectedly gets his period and has some negative dysphoric feelings about it, some shrimp are dead and we killed them

The second thing Riz does after figuring out he’s trans is to call his mom. 

Sklonda picks up on the third ring, a little frantic, and Riz belatedly checks the time on the screen of his emergency crystal to realize it’s just after three in the morning. “I’m okay,” he says, as quickly and firmly as he can manage, though he’s still shaking pretty much head to toe. "Everything's fine, I just. Had to talk to you." 

“Jeez, kiddo, you scared me,” she tells him, relieved, and he can hear the telltale rustle of her tucking her phone under one ear. “What’s up? Penny should be over to watch you after breakfast, and I’m scheduled to work ‘til late tonight. You need something sooner than that?” 

Riz meets his own eyes in the bathroom mirror, wide and yellow and set with ragged dark circles that should probably be cosmetically impossible for an eleven-year-old to achieve. “I--” he starts, and feels his voice catch in his throat. He sweeps a little of the mess into the sink with trembling claws, and grips the crystal tighter. “I cut my hair, Mom.” 

There’s a moment of worried silence over the line. “What, all by yourself?” He can hear Sklonda run her hands over her face. “I’m not mad,” she promises, a moment later, but Riz can barely register it over the ringing in his ears. "I'm not, but honey, at three in the morning? It couldn't wait?" 

He looks at the choppy, uneven curls, sticking out from his face in every direction, strewn over the countertop and all across tile floor in his haste to shear off the heavy, itchy, smothering weight. Looks at his reflection, the answer to the riddle staring him square in the face. His throat feels dry and he’s buzzing with a strange mix of excitement and terror so hard he feels like his whole body is vibrating. Riz takes a deep breath. “I’m not a girl,” he announces, the first time he’s spoken the actual words since he finally connected all the points of the constellation of clues he’s been putting together for months now. It feels good, saying it out loud. “I don’t think. I've been testing a theory, and I’m pretty sure I’m a boy?” 

Sklonda listens, and then answers, “Okay.” He can hear another rustle of fabric, the squeaking of one of the plastic chairs littered around the precinct shifting as she stands. “Okay. I’ll be home in ten, kiddo. I’ll be right there, alright?” Riz nods, still staring at the mirror, and almost hangs up before she adds, in a slightly choked-up voice, “Hey, I love you. You know that, yeah? I love you, and I’m glad you told me.” 

Riz smiles, and it looks a little more right on his face already. “Love you too, Mom.” 

* 

They even out the haircut into something a little less lopsided, eventually, between the pair of them. Riz wears a lot of crisp button-down shirts and ties and vests and goes a little too heavy-handed with his dad’s old cologne, and trades his backpack out for a briefcase. It’s easier, standing out in a way he can control, being singled out for a reason that’s not his goblin name or his classmates signing condolence cards for his dead dad or the teachers fumbling his pronouns every time he raises his hand. 

Sklonda has his back the same way she always has, because they both made identical promises to Pok to take care of each other the day their family shrank from three to two. Opens as many doors as she can for him, and never takes no for an answer. 

Penny Luckstone takes the new Riz in stride, offers him a fist-bump and a wide grin and a double serving of pizza rolls. “Cool,” she says, and “Love the new name. You wanna watch _Bad Cops 3_ tonight, or what?” 

She sticks it out much longer than the other babysitters, and once totally abuses her Adventuring Academy training to full sneak attack a kiosk worker who mumbles something rude about Riz under their breath. Sklonda picks them both up from the mall in the squad car with a stern face and a sparkle in her eye that Riz picks up on with an easy insight roll. They stop for ice cream on the way back. 

He maintains that equilibrium for a couple years, getting a little better at hiding every day, solving puzzles and cracking codes, not wasting much effort on finding friends who aren’t technically also being paid to hang out with him. It’s not sad or weird, it’s just. Things have always been kind of different, for Riz, and that’s fine. There's always something more important to worry about than trying to have the kind of life a regular thirteen-year-old boy is supposed to have. 

Probably things would have stayed that way a long time, except that the one afternoon the summer before Riz is due to start high school, Penny calls Sklonda to cancel, saying she’s got plans that weekend. And the day after that, she disappears. 

* 

Freshman year ends up being kind of a soft reset. He joins an adventuring party, more or less by coincidence. He becomes The Ball instead of the Briefcase Kid, and maybe there’s no changing being a goblin in a town without many goblins, or the fact that he’s about the size of most of his classmate’s backpacks if he hunches just a little, but he’s not The Kid With The Dead Dad. He’s not Riz Who Used To Be A Girl. 

He doesn’t mean to keep it a secret, exactly. 

He’s not like...ashamed or uncomfortable or afraid of what people might think about him. And he knows his friends better than to worry they’d be anything other than completely and unconditionally accepting, of, of. His whole gender _thing_. Definitely. Maybe a few well-meaning invasive questions along the way, but on the whole? Fine. Totally cool. 

Honestly, after finally getting on a regular regimen of transmutation shots, and his Mom’s tireless efforts pushing the legal paperwork through, it’s a new development that being trans is the kind of thing people can’t necessarily _tell_ about him at a glance? So sue him, he’s a rogue, it turns out he’s proficient at stealth. 

All of which is to say he’s been hanging out with the Bad Kids for the better part of a year before it occurs to him out of the blue that he sort of forgot let any of his friends in on the fact that he’s trans. 

He has this realization approximately six seconds after Adaine, elbow-deep in a box of photos currently being shuffled out of his dad’s hidden office, turns to him with a puzzled frown on her face and Riz’s fifth grade yearbook photo in her hand, and says, “Riz, I didn’t know you had a sister!” 

Riz blinks, startled, and feels his stomach curdle with a jolt of anxiety, and freezes for a fraction of a second too long to pass off a smooth misdirection. He shifts from one foot to the other, and opens his mouth, and shuts it again, awkwardly. “That’s actually... that’s, uh. Me.” His voice comes out in a faltering squeak, higher than its been in months. 

Adaine furrows her brow, sitting back on her thighs and peering closer. Riz remembers the way he looked back then, a mouth full of braces, his hair in a long frizzy braid that made the back of his neck itch. “This is you?” she echoes. “I don’t understand, why would you be listed under a different name?” 

“Uh--” He hasn’t had to explain it out _loud_ in so many years, and he didn’t _mean_ to keep it a secret but it was so much easier to let it ride, to keep forgetting to bring it up because then it would be a whole _thing_ , and maybe he didn’t want to feel _different_ from the others in any more ways than he already can’t help being. 

He feels about three seconds from retching and probably full-out panicking after that, because he’s still fishing aimlessly for the words but Adaine’s eyes are widening behind her round-rimmed glasses, and she’s looking between Riz and the old photograph with a drawing realization. 

“Oh,” she says, faintly. “Oh. _Oh._ ” 

“Old alias,” he explains, in a dizzy rush. “I, uh, don’t use it anymore, if you could--” 

“Of course,” she agrees, just as quickly, and drops the yearbook photo into his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry--” 

Riz shrugs, sweat beading over his neck. “It’s cool,” he says, as languid as he can manage it. “Totally chill, not a problem. I don’t mind you knowing or anything. I’m an open book,” he says, with a grin pulled a little too tight across his face. 

“I’m not sure that’s true,” Adaine says, and then blushes scarlet to the tips of her long ears. “I only meant. Obviously you aren’t _obligated_ to go around telling people your personal information, regardless of whether or not you consider them your friends. Obviously. But you also only told us you were allergic to shellfish after we threw a shrimp party for your birthday, Riz. Most of the things we know about you we found out by accident.” 

Riz feels his claws catching at the corner of the paper, and looks down to see the photo half-crumpled in his hand. “I can see why Fig skateboards away from this stuff all the time,” he grumbles, face hot. “Listen, I didn’t--I’m not _hiding it_ , or anything, okay? It just never came up. I didn’t wanna make it weird.” 

“It _absolutely_ came up,” Adaine argues, in the spirit of a person proficient in arguing semantics, “Riz, it’s a _shrimp party_ , it’s extremely relevant information if you can’t actually eat the shrimp without breaking out in hives--” 

“Not the shrimp thing,” he says, folding his arms a little uncomfortably. “The trans thing, Adaine, the thing where I’m trans!” 

“Oh. Yes, well, that’s different,” she says, and perches on the edge of the desk, feet swinging as they dangle off the ground. She’s small for a medium creature, probably at least half of why Riz gets along with her so well. Analytical, and down-to-earth, and fierce in a way that simmers hidden just below the surface, but from a practical standpoint it’s also just nice to talk to someone who only has to crane a little bit to make eye contact when they talk. 

Riz winces. "I made it weird, didn’t I?" 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her fingers worry over the edge of her sleeve, pulling at a loose thread and then mending it back into place in a shower of white sparks. “I think I can understand, actually, why you didn’t mention sooner.” 

“Yeah?” 

"I suppose from what I've seen, it seems like being out in the open always means...clubs and pins and parades and things like that. I think Kristen even made t-shirts with slogans on them?” She frowns. “Which are all wonderful! Of course. But it’s also so goddamn intimidating.” 

Riz blows out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, feels his shoulders droop in a long sigh. “ _Yeah_ ,” he groans. “Yeah, fuckin’ tell me about it.” 

Adaine grins, and then hesitates for a long moment. “Is it something you want the rest of the party to know, though? I could tell Kristen not to make the t-shirts unless you specifically request them.” 

Riz chews at his bottom lip, eyes drifting down to the floor. “Jawbone would probably tell me to be more open and honest about my experiences,” he parrots, a little bitterly, and maybe a little unfairly, but Riz reserves the right to feel condescended to by a guy who isn't even in the room if he wants. 

“I don’t think so.” Adaine dispels the thought with a frown. She pushes her glasses up where they’re sliding down the bridge of her nose. “What’s right for Jawbone isn’t always right for everyone. He’d probably say something like your comfort and safety comes first, and you don’t need to tell anybody that you don’t want to, provided you have people to ask for help if you need it.” 

Riz shuffles his feet, and folds the photo up to stuff in the pocket of his shorts. “I said I don’t mind, okay, Adaine," he grumbles. 

“And I’m saying you can be a closed book if you want to. Or an open one,” she insists, leaning forward over the desk. “And if anyone gives you crap for it, I’ll punch them for you.” She balls up her thin, delicate spellcasters’ hands into fists, and mimes an untrained but determined right hook. The anxious prickling in Riz’s throat melts into a warmth that suffuses his narrow chest. 

“I would pay so much gold to see that,” he says, and lifts the box of photographs again. “You want to help me disarm the booby traps on the cabinet doors?” 

“Yes, please," Adaine crows, pushing her sleeves up past her elbows. 

* 

It already feels like a bad day before the sun finishes creeping over the horizon. Riz wakes up practically bristling with frustration, tries and fails to chase away a tension headache with gulps of cold coffee, and impulsively forgoes his usual vest and tie for a hooded sweatshirt Gorgug donated to him after it allegedly fell awry of an enlarge/reduce spell. 

It’s not even particularly cold for mid-autumn, but something in the air has Riz gritting his teeth and shoving his hands deep into the pockets to suppress a shiver. The coffee sours in his stomach, and by halfway through his morning lockpicking lecture Riz is shifting uncomfortably in his seat and tapping his pen against the spine of his notebook, distracted and nauseous and restless. 

He considers, fleetingly, that he might have been poisoned, but weirdly enough Riz is too caught up in whatever funk he’s experiencing to even entertain the usual paranoia. He’s probably coming down with a flu or something, he reasons, pushing his food around on his lunch tray aimlessly and determining to suck it up and push through it, same as always. 

“The Ball,” Fabian chimes in, with a shove to his shoulder that jars him out of his distracted huff. “Are you even _listening_ to me, I said I’m going to kick your _ass_ at the shooting range next period, I’ve been drilling with my crossbow all week and your ten-point lead is about to _disappear_.” 

Riz forces himself to take a grim mouthful of tuna surprise, and scoffs. “You wish.” 

Across the table, Fig narrows her eyes, halfway through applying a third coat of black nail polish while she fishes through a bag of cheetos she stole from the vending machine. “You okay, Riz? You were totally spacing out there, man.” 

Gorgug frowns. “Yeah, you’re taking individual bites of food and everything, I’ve never seen you do that before.” 

“I’m fine,” Riz says, sharply, and scoops the next bite of tuna surprise with his hands to prove a point, shoveling it down with as much enthusiasm as he can manage to fake. It’s a pretty good deception roll, as far as he’s concerned, but it doesn’t seem to convince them all completely. “This stuff is just gross, okay, leave me alone.” 

Fig harrumphs and waves her hand to dry her nails quicker, but she lets him have it. “Yeah, they don’t make it like Doreen used to, that’s for sure.” 

“Here, eat up, The Ball,” Fabian says, and offers him half a rye sandwich piled with pâté and some kind of stinky elven cheese. “I want you to lose to me at your best, or the victory isn’t worth it.” 

Riz’s stomach churns harder. “I’m good, thanks,” he says, with a grimace. “I’m full, actually, so.” He pushes out of his chair, carefully navigating the around high cafeteria tables at least half the party has tripped over and eaten shit in the past year. “See you at the shooting range, right?” 

“Don’t even think about starting without me,” Fabian calls after him, “Unless you’re worried you’ll need the advantage!” 

Riz’s stomach is cramping painfully and his head aches and his neck is prickling with goosebumps and he ducks down the hallway and barricades himself inside a bathroom stall, fully intending to hide and wait for whatever the fuck this shitty mood is to blow over, and then. Actually puts the pieces together. 

He makes a quick investigation check to confirm. It would take a pretty low roll to miss the evidence immediately available to him. 

His face goes hot and he ducks down further into his hoodie, shifting fast from uncomfortable to mortified. “Gross,” he mutters, under his breath. 

Riz has been lucky enough to skip out on the whole ordeal of...the thing some people get once a month. Mostly. He went a couple rounds before coming out, and then a couple more when blockers were hard to come by or transmutation shots played enough havoc with his hormones, but it’s been almost a year since the last time he’s had to worry about getting his period. Fuck, he’s not even a little bit prepared right now. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, rising unbidden with the wave of embarrassment and frustration, which makes the whole thing feel even more ridiculous because he can count on one hand the number of times he’s even been physically _able_ to cry since starting transmutation therapy. 

It’s the perfect storm to make him feel nauseous with the sensation that his whole body is rebelling against him from the inside out. Riz feels his face crumple, and swipes at his eyes with the oversized sleeves of his hoodie, and has his crystal out to call his mom almost before he realizes what he’s doing. 

He stops with his thumb hovering over the call button. What, is he planning to lurk in this stall until she swings by the school to pick him up? Fake sick and hide away in his room the rest of the week, feeling miserable and bloated and gross? It’s tempting, even though it’s the worst plan Riz has come up with in months. 

Riz has a sneaking suspicion, though, that if he disappears, it won’t take an hour before the Bad Kids hunt him down to find out what’s wrong. Having best friends is so goddamn inconvenient sometimes. 

“Fuck this,” he mutters, and darts out of the stall again, ears pinned back flat against the sides of his head. 

He swipes a pair of basketball shorts out of the lost and found, and starts off down the corridor toward the healer’s office, and hesitates again. Maybe he should just ask Adaine if she has any-- 

“Hey there, kiddo,” Jawbone says, and Riz spins on his heel, biting down on his tongue to muffle a shout. The guidance counselor waves at him, offering a sharp canine smile. The coffee mug in his hand says _Don’t Hesitate To Talk To Me Even Though I’m Eating This Mug_. “You look like you’re on a mission.” 

Riz surreptitiously tugs the hem of the hoodie as low as it will go, hiding the spare shorts behind his back. “I was just, uh. Looking for Adaine.” 

Jawbone nods, and clears his throat, a little awkwardly, leaning in to say in a gruff half-whisper, “Listen, kid, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but, uh. You seem like you could use some assistance? I keep my office pretty well stocked, you know, if there's anything you maybe need...." 

Riz glances to the side, calculating whether he could dart fast enough around the corner that Jawbone wouldn't be able to tell which way he went. "Uh, no, totally fine. All good here, no problems, I was just. Just going, actually! Lemme get out of your, uh. Out of your fur--" 

"Riz, hey." Jawbone reaches out his free hand in a calming gesture. "Come on, bell's gonna ring in a second, you don't wanna get caught up in all that just because you got caught off-guard. I can get you set up with some menstrual products and some tylenol, if you want, maybe throw in a hot chocolate and a free excuse note if you want to sit the rest of the day out, huh? No sweat." 

That startles a flinch out of him, and Riz feels his stomach churn again, offers Jawbone a wary side-eye as he shuffles reluctantly closer. "Are you reading my mind right now?" he asks, nervously, narrowing his eyes like he'll get lucky and miraculously gain the ability to detect magic with a high enough investigation. 

Jawbone chuckles, but it's a slightly self-conscious chuckle. "Like I said, I don't wanna put you on the spot," he echoes, and scratches at the back of his neck. "Its an. Uh. Wolf thing." Riz frowns, and he elaborates. "Keen, uh. Keen sense of smell." 

Riz pulls a face. "Ugh." 

"Yeah, uh. Definitely not my favorite part, but. You learn to make the best of it." Jawbone pushes open his office door, and the pair of them duck inside a few seconds before the bell rings. "Lemme find that drawer." 

Riz shifts on the balls of his feet, and thinks about sinking through the ground and just chilling there where absolutely nobody can look at him ever again. "Was it. Did Adaine tell you, then? That I'm, uh--" 

Still rifling through his desk, Jawbone waves a dismissive paw. "Adaine? Naw, no. Just a lucky insight roll, kiddo." He makes a soft triumphant growl, and passes the promised items to Riz, who folds them into the pocket of his hoodie with an instinctive sleight of hand. "Plus, I have a little personal experience with surprise cycles like that. I know it can be a real unpleasant shock." 

Riz nods, quickly. "Moon cycles, right." 

Jawbone barks out a laugh. "Well, yeah. Those too." 

Riz blinks. 

The guidance counselor grins a toothy grin, and reaches out to ruffle Riz's hair. "C'mon, you thought my old man named me Jawbone? That sound like a cisgender sort of name to you?" He shrugs. "Well, blow me down, I guess I haven't talked about it too much outside the GSA. You're never really done coming out, huh?" 

"Oh," he answers, instead of anything more clever or coherent than that, staring at Jawbone a little wide-eyed. "Cool." 

Jawbone chuckles. "Hell yeah, brother." He tilts his head towards the back room of the office. "Feel free to get settled, stay as long as you need. You want that hot chocolate? I can brew that up for you no sweat." 

Riz swallows, and furiously blinks until his eyes feel less watery. "I, uh. Gotta get to ranged target practice," he says. "Can't miss it." 

"I hear ya," Jawbone says, and pats him one more time, firmly on the shoulder. Riz feels a little bit like if he stays another minute he'll do something ridiculous, like go in for a hug. "I won't keep you then, Riz. Take a rain check on the cocoa if you want, and hey." He winks. "I'm always here, if you need anything. No stupid questions. I'm here to be a resource, okay?" 

Riz darts away in a little bit of a panic, but at least it's a different panic than the one he'd started out with, which probably counts as an improvement. 

* 

When Riz is nine years old, before he's gotten a chance to _be_ Riz, his Dad goes on a business trip, and gets sick, and never makes it back home. 

Looking back, there are a lot of questions he doesn't think to ask, about that. It was one of the things he always took for granted. Dad was away on business a lot, because his vague, important work needed him to leave more than Riz needed him to stay. He was some kind of clerk for some kind of office, and when he brought up anything to do with that office at the dinner table Mom would shake her head, just a little, and he'd redirect the conversation without blinking, offer Riz a shiny white grin and pivot to the pile of dog-eared mystery novels he'd been poring over all week, instead. 

Pok's headstone at Cravencroft marks a palimpsest, a grave without a body in it, and Riz is younger than most are when they learn about death so up close and personal, so he barely understands enough to question it. Pok Gukgak is more a mystery than a man he ever really _knew_ , and that makes it a little better to realize, a few years down the line, that he never really got the chance to meet the real Riz, either. 

Riz _tells_ him, of course, stands in the short prickly grass in front of the stone slab carved with his Dad's name and talks all about the man he's working to become. Everything important, he makes sure to tell him. He just doesn't know how how good the reception is, in the outer planes. Whether there's any way of listening. 

Years down the line, signal or no signal, Pok gets the word out to him, anyway. 

Riz clutches tight to the crystal he dug out of the top drawer of his Dad's desk, and plays the video over and over and over again, a little hazy with exhaustion and adrenaline and the buzz of top-shelf tequila and late-night milkshakes. Sklonda finds him hunched over in the big leather chair, poring over photos of his father in tuxedos, printed onto false passports, posing with dignitaries from Fallinel and Highcourt and Throshk, shiny black arquebus strapped to his hip. 

"This is so cool," he whispers, eyes bright in the dim light of the apartment. "Mom, Dad was so _cool_." 

She gives up fast on trying to dissuade him from resolving to become a spy by any means necessary, and squeezes into the chair beside him, picking up one of the photos of Dad and and old partner toasting at a banquet, and letting her mouth turn up in a ghost of a smile. "You got the message, huh?" She nods vaguely to the crystal still clutched tight in Riz's hand. 

He glances down at the screen again, a frozen frame of Pok leaning down to adjust the settings of the camera, his younger self a blur of motion in the background. Riz bites his lip, and curls in a little tighter against Sklonda's side. "Do you think he'd like me?" he asks, despite himself. 

His Mom's arms wrap around him, instinctively. "Oh, kiddo," she says, in a voice like shattered glass. "He knew you'd turn out fine, no matter who you grew up to be. I don't think anything about you could ever change that. Your Dad would be so proud of you." 

Riz turns his face into her shoulder. "Awesome," he says again, throat tight. "So fucking cool." 

Pok Gukgak is a mystery Riz is still trying to solve, and the plague that's lived in his blood his whole life knows how much he'd sacrifice for just one answer. Dangles the information in front of him, over and over again as she darts between shadows and behind mirrors and pins Riz under her claws. 

"You want to see your Dad again?" she whispers in his ear, with her voice like melting ice. "I'll show you, kid. Free of charge. Just give these guys the slip and I'll take you right to him." 

Riz goes chasing after answers through the literal pits of hell, and arrives on the other side of a two-way mirror just in time to watch his father spit blood over the concrete and confess brusquely to being the kind of uncaring asshole Riz was better off growing up without. He fights back the urge to lose his lunch all over the interrogation chamber, and presses his hands to the glass, and watches until he can't watch anymore. 

It's easier to run to him once the devils have left him unconscious on the ground, and even then Riz hesitates, unable to make himself reach out and pull his father's motionless body into the briefcase. He doesnt know who Pok Gukgak is. He doesn't know what Pok will think of him, if he'll look at Riz with the same tired disdain he saw through the glass. If Pok will even _recognize_ him. 

The door bursts open, and Riz loses his chance. 

The next round passes in a whirlwind, and Riz knows it won't take more than a single hit to drop him, knows there's no getting out of the clusterfuck he's gotten himself into and he's going to die here, and he left without saying goodbye to his Mom and he never got to save his Dad-- 

\--his Dad who's suddenly in front of him, miraculously back on his feet with a steely glint in his eyes and a familiar wild grin on his face, staring at Riz down the barrel of a smoking gun. 

Pok's arms around him are sturdy and warm, and there's a faint wisp of his cologne on the air as he raises his face to the burning sky and reaches for a hidden earpiece Riz's keen eyes failed to spot, and then they're shooting upwards in a beam of white light, and Riz looks up at the glowing halo behind his Dad's head, and doesn't know how he could ever have doubted him. 

An unfamiliar voice crackles over Pok's earpiece. "Looks like you've got someone there with you. Anything we need to worry about?" 

Riz holds his breath, and holds on tight, and he can hear the glowing pride in Pok's voice when he calls back, "It's my son!" 

* 

Fresh out of heaven and riding high on the echo of those words in his ears, Riz maybe goes a little buckwild. 

Fabian's arranging shrimp all around the rims of little cocktail glasses with the kind of intense focus that can only come from the truly wasted. Gorgug and Ragh are arm wrestling for a crown that Adaine made last time out of discarded crab leg shells, and Tracker and Kristen are arm wrestling as a thinly veiled excuse to lean in and plant kisses on one another's mouths, giggling. Fig is...somewhere, and Ayda is probably the same somewhere, and Riz is trying hard to keep track of all his friends so no one ends up floating in the ocean on his watch again but he's also been taking long pulls from a bottle of sweet wine with absolutely no shellfish to wash it down, so his perception has been higher before. 

Most of his focus is on keeping the impromptu stream running, angling the camera setup at Gorgug and Fabian while they set up some kind of interpretive dance competition and giggling so hard he almost drops the phone. And then he's taking Ragh's dare to dive into the shrimp hot tub, whipping off his shirt and backflipping into a pool of loose shellfish in only a threadbare undershirt binder and a patchwork of regrettable magical tattoos with a howl of, "Hoot growl, right guys?" and then Gorgug is offering him shrimp _again_ when he _knows_ Riz is allergic, and they're so small and so dead, and for _what_ , he can't even eat them, a totally senseless waste of life-- 

"Psst, hey," Kristen says, when the stream is ended and they're lying flat on their backs in a pile of pillows in the Hangvan, her head in Tracker's lap. "I'm gay. Did I ever tell you guys that?" 

There's a chorus of semiconscious assent, and Ragh throws up a hand for a high five. "Fuck yeah, _I'm_ gay! Team gay!" 

Riz wants in on a high five but doesn't know where, specifically, he falls on qualifying for this one, given that he doesn't particularly want to be kissing anybody but if he did he can only imagine a sort of ambiguously masculine shape to the person he'd theoretically be hypothetically into kissing, so he lifts his hand in the air and chimes in, "I'm trans!" 

There's a beat of quiet as the other kids process this, nodding in drunken approval, before Tracker leans in and slaps his palm, excited. "Me too!" she whoops, her almond eyes crinkled up in delight. "Trans rights, baby!" 

"Trans rights," Gorgug echoes, solemnly, and slings one of his lanky arms over Riz in a horizontal half-hug. "My friends are so cool." 

* 

He's not asleep by a long shot, but the knock on his window in the dark startles him anyway. Riz has one hand on his arquebus before he looks up, and belatedly recognizes the old signal they made up, when Adaine and Kristen and Fig were all couch surfing in Gilear's apartment, one door over. He'd insisted they come up with something, after one too many house calls past midnight that nearly triggered a surprise attack round from one sleep-deprived, paranoid goblin or another. 

Riz drops his hand from his weapon, and squints out into the dark to see Kristen Applebees perched on the second floor balcony, waving a ribbon dancer at him and grinning sheepishly. She looks strangely at home, silhouetted against the starry sky and half obscured by the light refracting off the glass. 

"Hey. What the fuck?" Riz greets her, sliding the window ajar so she can stumble through with all the grace of a newborn calf. 

Kristen gathers herself off the floor, and blows a stray curl of red-gold hair out of her face. "You weren't at your office," she explains, like that's the be all and end all of how she got the bright idea to climb into Riz's living room at two in the morning without giving notice. 

"You could have texted me," he points out. "Maybe made sure I was awake?" 

"Oh, yeah." She shrugs, entirely unapologetic. "Well, I'm here now, and _you_ don't really sleep, so. Looks like it worked out, right?" 

Riz looks her over, trying and failing to puzzle out the context of this abrupt visit. "What did you need? Are you like...in trouble, or something?" 

She waves a hand, planting herself sideways on the small couch, filling the space like it's a chair, her legs spilling over one side. "No, nah, I was just, like, working through some stuff, you know? Normally I'd talk it out with Tracker, right, but..." Kristen pauses, looking momentarily crestfallen. "God, I miss Tracker," she sighs. "Fallinel doesn't know how good they have it, selfish elf bastards." 

Riz narrows his eyes, trying to puzzle out what niche she expects him to fill that Tracker would ordinarily. "Please don't kiss me again," he says, because it doesn't hurt to establish the firm boundary just in case. 

She raises a teasing eyebrow. "You sure? I give pretty good smooches, Gukgak." 

"Kristen." 

"Yeah, okay." Hands up in a gesture of peace, and then her expression goes a lot harder to read. "I dunno, I guess I was just wondering about, you know. Me, and what lies I find myself believing just because the way I was raised I never questioned it, and I've been talking to Cassandra about some of like... who they are, and maybe if that's some kind of reflection on me, or if it has to mean _anything_ , you know, meaning's what you make it and it's all like. Performances we put on because we all just decided one day that was how it was gonna be, but also just because something's a performance doesn't make it not _real_ , right?" She looks to Riz like all of this makes complete sense and is easy to follow and understand. He nods, completely lost. "Right, so, and then I have to think about if maybe I'm only worrying about any of it in the first place because there's an expectation that fitting into this whole _category_ is almost dependent on some kind of performance of heterosexuality, but obviously lots of people are gay and still _feel_ like that's a word that applies to them, so then is it weird for me to question it just because--and I just want to know, like, what's the difference between knowing that there's something that you _are_ , for sure, versus just knowing that there's something you _aren't_ but not knowing if there's even a way to put a word to where you belong outside that wrong category, or if you even _want_ to." 

Riz blinks at her, and ventures. "Are you...was that a question? Are you asking me a question?" 

Kristen stares back at him, nodding and resting her chin in her hands, and sits up a little straighter. "You know, maybe it's the kind of thing you don't need an answer to. Maybe you just try it and see how you feel." 

Something about the way she says it strikes a familiar chord in Riz, but he can't piece together enough of the context to know exactly what she's driving at. "Yeah?" he agrees, hoping for the best. 

Kristen beams. "Cool! It's they/them now. I'll put the word out." 

Riz feels every cog in his brain catch, and then simultaneously shift into a new gear. "Oh," he says. "Oh! Nice." Kristen offers him a thumbs up, and jumps to their feet with a slightly lighter air. He catches himself up on the one-sided conversation, and frowns. "Did you just break into my apartment in the middle of the night to ask me if you're non-binary?" 

They stop halfway to the window, and smack a palm against their forehead. "No! Shit, I can't believe I almost forgot!" Kristen reaches into their bag, and flings a balled-up mass of tie-dyed cotton back at him. Riz unfurls it to stare at the spiral of pink, white and blue. "I made you a t-shirt," they announce, cheerfully. "Gorgug's driving me and Fig up to Bastion City Pride next week, I thought I should ask if you wanna tag along." 

Riz bundles the t-shirt in his arms, and reaches for the tight ball of anxiety that's always had a home in the pit of his stomach, and finds that it's much smaller than he remembers, these days. "Yeah, that, uh," he clears his throat. "That sounds good."

**Author's Note:**

> I do want to restate that staying closeted and/or being stealth aren't like. character flaws and they're often necessary survival tactics and I hope that comes through! I simply think as an overarching arc riz struggles a lot with feeling disconnected from his friends and trying to be self-reliant in a way that isn't the healthiest and being out to them in this context is a piece of him working on that. its not a thing that I, the author, want to judge a real human being for doing or not doing. anyway have a good day!
> 
> find me on twitter and tumblr @wastrelwoods


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